Doc, local call rate isnt much of a bargain these days, many of us pay a flat 2 or 3 p per call for geographic calls and 0845's are often more than that probaly about 4p per minute. 0845 are not much better than 0870 both are a ripoff.

and 3 cut offs during the night and day, done and checked everthing Pipex told me to and still cant work it out ;-( : @-(

Time to move.

As mentioned Plusnet is one of the best for Customer Service, price and Reliability.

Plusnet

I may have the solution to the cut out probs! I was upgraded to 2mb by BT a couple of weeks ago and the cut-outs had been getting worse since then. Today, it took me ages to get a line connected for more than 10 secs and I was on the phone to BT, straightaway! It seems I have a Voyager ADSL modem and, in common with a load of other modems, they need a 'booster driver' to cope with the higher speed. They gave me the URL ... www.voyager.bt.com/booster and a small patch later...BINGO! Stable line.

Sounds like I'm not alone with the prob though, but this worked for me.

Adam, I have looked at plusnet, but not sure one it is I need to subscribe to, the 9.99 or 21.99?

at the moment my pipex is unlimited download as I download music etc and leave the internet connect 24 hours a day

Rich,

The 9.99 move deal is only for 3 months and then you move to the 21.99 per month deal. There is now no exchange fee, I was charged 75 when I moved.

The 21.99 gives you unlimited download. They are trying to bring in limited download, but competitors are forcing them to withdraw the threat.

You have to of course content with the 30:1 ratio as with all ISP's, but I have just been upgraded to 2mb with the promise of 8mb as soon as it is available.

I'm trying to get my mobile phone to communicate with my PC via a USB cable.

To do that, I need to make the PC "think" that the USB cable is port COM4. Can somebody tell me how to do that please? I'm running XP Pro.

edit: According to the instructions, the Windows Hardware Wizard should detect the USB cable when I plug it in and set it up for me. Unfortunately, it doesn't.

Hils,

Are you trying to use it as a modem or download something to it, from it?

(If it is the frog then I am not helping!)

ADAM,

I'm not trying to use it as a modem at this stage (although once it is connected, I should then be able to use it as a modem). I'm merely trying to download the pictures that I've taken with the phone onto my PC and upload MP3's from my PC to the phone.

To add, I've tried it with 2 PC's so far and I can't make it work with either.

And you didn't get given software with the phone?

What make and model is it?

It's a Samsung D500.

The software didn't come with the phone, it came with the USB cable which I bought separately.

hilary, you will definitely need software to make it work.

Hilary
For the USB connection to work you need the USB driver for the divice which should have come with the cable.
skg

Go to this site and download this software, should sort everything out:
Samsung Support

I've got the software ........... it came with the cable.

I wonder if skg might have hit the nail on the head. Hidden on the software CD are umpteen USB drivers. I've now installed the Samsung USB driver, but when I look in "Device Manager" (having restarted) it still doesn't show the COM4 port and the Samsung PIM software setup doesn't offer any options for me to connect the phone to PC.

I really am getting hacked off with this now and am on the verge of phoning Orange to tell them to shove the bloody thing where the sun doesn't shine!

Hilary,

The link above should work (post 3698 ). It is the Samsung PC link software. This will include the USB drivers as well.

ADAM,

Thanks, but that's the software that I've got.

hilary, why do you need COM4? It would be very unusual for software to make a USB connection appear as on COM4. If you need COM4 because you have software that asks for it, then it sounds to me like you need to replace that software with software that understands USB. However surely part of the software you have just installed allows you to access the phone via the USB port?

Actually K, I'm not sure that it does need to be specifically COM4. I've been reading an internet forum on Samsung phones this afternoon and the posters on that forum were all mentioning COM4. Looking through the help pages of the Samsung software it simply refers to connecting to the PC via a COM port. As I understand it, the USB connection assigns itself to a serial port.

With my digital camera and MP3 player I can connect to the PC via the USB cable and view files and folders and drag-and-drop them between between PC and accessory. The mobile phone set up doesn't appear to be anything like that.

Also the cable itself isn't any old USB cable from PC World ............ it's got a special didgerrydoo thingey at the end which connects to the phone.

Hilary
With my phone and PDA the USB connection is shown seperately from the COM ports. Is there not an option to change the connection divice? The activesync for my iPaq requires you to re-search the available connections.

skg